The group flung themselves to the ground, covering their ears and crushing their eyes shut. Before the smoke cleared and the debris settled, they were moving again. The steel doors were bent inwards as if a titan had punched through them. Inside there was a garage, a workshop, and a long roadway as large as a four-lane highway, and in pristine condition.

But what made Alex feel a surge of elation was the line of new Iranian military trucks, sitting idle as if waiting for them.

“Load ’em up.”

The group leaped into back and front cabins, Sam taking the wheel and immediately flooring it before the doors were even closed. “Buckle up, children, and keep your arms inside the ride at all times.”

Alex checked his wristwatch. “Thirty minutes. We need to be outside the tunnel or it’ll be like being in the barrel of a cannon when that nuke goes off.”

“You set a nuke?” Adira’s brows went up.

“Sure, Jabir ibn Hayyan is still in here somewhere, pulling the strings. And I can guarantee he’ll be plotting his revenge on all of us. I gave him a choice and he chose the wrong option.” Alex’s smile was grim. “Like I hoped.”

Sam had the truck up to eighty miles per hour in the tunnel, but the smooth roadway surface made them seem like they were floating.

“Faster,” Alex said.

Sam’s foot stamped down, squeezing the last few ergs from the engine. Alex’s eyes moved from the hands on his watch to the distance ticking over on the odometer. In his mind he calculated, remembering the tunnel network schematics from Hammerson’s stratigraphic sonar readings. They had twenty minutes until detonation, but at the rate they were traveling, he allowed himself a glimmer of hope.

Alex jolted upright as a door in his mind creaked open, and like a cloud of greasy smoke, the words of Jabir ibn Hayyan leaked in.

“You think you are free?” The evil little voice croaked with laughter. “I will send a thousand of my Zhayedan to your home. You know you can’t stop them all, and I only need to win once, to obliterate millions of you.”

Alex groaned, crushing his eyes shut.

“I will be free, and when I am, I will find you, Alex Hunter.” It seemed to laugh and then the voice became sly. “And I will find your Aimee Weir, and then perhaps I will find your son, Joshua. I’ll save him for last. His pain will be the most unbearable.”

Alex put his hands up to his head, but the sound of Adira’s warning jarred him back to the truck’s cabin. Up ahead a line of soldiers was waiting for them. Two jeeps had also been parked nose-to-nose as a barrier.